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A Macdonalds worker gets approx 7-9 US / hour BUT the Foxconn worker gets free accommodation in the plants dormitory plus food there. So taking this into consideration I think it's not so much cheaper in china as Foxconn also has to pay this.
Foxconn worker gets free accommodation in the plants dormitory plus food there?? Diden't come out of there pay?
 
It's funny how most posters on MR have so little little business acumen and experience. I've seen the comments repeated ad nauseum that robotic factories will not help the economy because they have few employees. This rationale completely ignores the fact that a large factory of any kind is supported by a web of suppliers, and most of these suppliers are small businesses. The jobs and economic activity created by these small businesses will far outnumber the contributions from the factory itself.
 
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I hope you guys realize that your numbers are extremely silly. They assemble mac pros in Texas. They went up $500, but they also went up $300 on each of the prior two major refreshes. If those numbers were remotely close to accurate, it would be a non-starter.
Salary abroad is $600-800 in America it will be $15 per hour,then you add workers comp insurance, and all the other BS lawsuits and fees the manufacturers have to pay. Salary alone for one person will be almost $20 per hour when you factor in the miscellaneous expenses that a manufacturer has to pay. They do not work 8 hour shifts in Asia either. Now imagine 12-14 hours at $15-20 per hour not counting overtime lol.. You know how much money a manufacturer has to pay in permit fees in America? Do you know how much lawyers bill at per hour? Do you know how many class action lawsuits factories in America often have to pay..? Asia is much better at this, trust me.. I know both places very well.
 
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Salaries in China have been increasing steadily for the last 10 years, and it is no longer the cheapest labor market for manufacturing. They are investing in automation in the context of Industry 4.0. We need to do the same.

Germany has been investing in Industry 4.0 for more than a decade. The US has not done anything of real interest.

It's time to turn that around.
 
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I love the idea of more American jobs, but i do not like the idea of an even more expensive iPhone to make it happen. Ultimately bringing back these jobs to America will only work out if companies are willing to take less of a profit to keep prices the same, and not pass on the higher labor costs onto consumers.

I believe to remain viable, Apple will have to lower prices, but what do I know?
 
America is short attention span theater whatever the president does in his last 8 months will be what he's judged by in 2020 run

Yea, nobody ever criticized Obama for what he did during his first 88 months in office, and they definitely didn't criticize Hillary Clinton for things that happened more than 8 months ago.

Also, apparently America also doesn't use punctuation.
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I don't share my good stuff. It's expensive, and I ain't no socialist ;)

C'mon man. I wanna have those Trump winning a reelection hallucinations.
 
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Dude, they're way past that. Pence 2024 is where it's at!

While I cannot vote (and if I could I wouldn't have voted for Trump), I think by democratic standards it would be fair to let Trump show what he can do. That has to happen over the longer term and not judging by a few days.

Maybe his initial elephant in the porcelain store behavior will be corrected by reality.

Nobody will work on business solutions which only benefit one party.

There are laws to follow and threats will be met with resistance.

For example, if I was FORD and had decided to build a factory in Mexico vs. US you couldn't get me to change my mind based on a threat of 35% duty, as my initial decision was based on sound financials. Make it even or at least close with a US set up and we can talk.

America first doesn't work in a global economy and anybody who tries to interrupt the current structures will actually rip open a new hole to stuff an existing (perceived) hole.

There are also a lot of jobs in the importing and shipping business and then there is the consumer. They will not buy American, if the quality to price ratio is not acceptable.

I am not including the mis-guided consumers who will pay triple or any price $$$ for a designer name for prestige reasons.

Reading MR it is hard to believe that the iPhone is a good product, but if it truly was bad Apple would not sell millions.
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it's a miracle that we still use vowels...

FTW!
 
Prices wouldn't be an extreme like that and Apple is never going to market a price in America that is greater than elsewhere. It just wouldn't make sense in any way. Even with rising production costs. The price hike would be fluid across the board, not in America only. Instead of your $2,000 in America and $650 foreign, it would be more like $900 across the board. I think there are just overall issues with relying strictly on foreign factories and doing some production on our own soil isn't a bad thing. What do you think will happen if the US has issues with China down the line? You think they will allow the US and our allies to continue to use them for cheap labor?

And what happens if China slaps a tariff on the iPhone to promote its own local phone manufacturers? Then Apple's major new market in China, responsible for its record growth and essential to its continued expansion goes away? Apple can't compete in India because it can't charge as little as those manufacturers who make their phones in India and get breaks from the government -- they were trying to sell refurbished phones there to just compete. You seem to have a simplistic view of the world, and that's what's going to ultimately destroy the US if it pursues this type of "America First" policy.
 
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America is the largest consumer of Chinese goods in the world. China won't hurt that relationship, and trade negotiations will continue - but this time with businessmen and not politicians leading them.
 
So, you're saying that just to prevent Trump from claiming victory you would miss the opportunity to more jobs and $7B in direct investments?
Please tell me you didn't vote.

Well first, yes. I do think long term anything that undermine's Trump's false narrative is a net positive.

Second, I understand what this factory means. It won't be a bunch of permanent jobs, it will be mostly roboticised. If you think this is anything more than temporary jobs during construction and a handful after, you're delusional. Americans simply won't do the type of labour people think of when they think about FoxConn factory workers.
 
Prices wouldn't be an extreme like that and Apple is never going to market a price in America that is greater than elsewhere. It just wouldn't make sense in any way. Even with rising production costs. The price hike would be fluid across the board, not in America only. Instead of your $2,000 in America and $650 foreign, it would be more like $900 across the board. I think there are just overall issues with relying strictly on foreign factories and doing some production on our own soil isn't a bad thing. What do you think will happen if the US has issues with China down the line? You think they will allow the US and our allies to continue to use them for cheap labor?
Apple cannot pass the extra burden to other countries. Other countries will just say to manufacture in their country you should recollect episodes of Indonesia and India. They will just ask the question why we should bear the high cost of living associated with US manufacturing when Apple is not ready to invest in their human capital?
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I hope you guys realize that your numbers are extremely silly. They assemble mac pros in Texas. They went up $500, but they also went up $300 on each of the prior two major refreshes. If those numbers were remotely close to accurate, it would be a non-starter.
Mac Pro's are small volume they are just assembling it. My point is if every component is manufactured in US. Please read my comments again. If assembly costs are going up by just $200 please think if every component is manufactured here.
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And what happens if China slaps a tariff on the iPhone to promote its own local phone manufacturers? Then Apple's major new market in China, responsible for its record growth and essential to its continued expansion goes away? Apple can't compete in India because it can't charge as little as those manufacturers who make their phones in India and get breaks from the government -- they were trying to sell refurbished phones there to just compete. You seem to have a simplistic view of the world, and that's what's going to ultimately destroy the US if it pursues this type of "America First" policy.
Exactly sir. You spoke out what I am trying to say.
 
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But the question is are we ready to pay $2000? How do we feel if the iPhone price is $2000 is US and the rest of the world gets it for $650?

Each iPhone costs Apple around $200. Around $20 of that is labor. Even if the labor went up 500%, that still means the phone would cost them around $300. They could maintain the price and still be taking most of the profit in the phone industry.

How does Apple get away with charging $650 for a phone that costs them $200? Because the market will pay it. It's Apple's job to charge the maximum about they can for their phone regardless of what it costs to make. When manufacturing costs rise, Apple cannot raise the sale price of the phone...if they could, they'd already be charging the higher price with the low manufacturing cost. There is zero relationship between cost to make something and its selling price. But if the margin isn't high enough they can't sell the product anymore at all.
 
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It would be great to have more manufacturing and technical jobs in the US. However, it's awfully naive to believe that trade is this simple. It's not about winning the small skirmishes. The US lags behind other countries in secondary education and vocational education. The need for retraining and primary training has been discussed for years and nothing has been done. It takes a much broader vision than sheer protectionism.
Regardless, Apple needs to partner for more of it's supply source needs.
 
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How exactly are you sure this has zero to do with Trump? I don't recall any rumors of US based iPhone component production prior to this election cycle. The article even infers it is related to Trump with the bit on US protectionism.

It's as if people are actually afraid Trump may do a few good things for the US.

It's as if people are actually afraid that people who do not pay attention to the incredible damage Trump is going to wreak on the US will only hear about stuff like this and think he's awesome and re-elect him.

Plus, they say right in their statement that it's due to other factors. If it was due to Trump I'm sure they'd be saying it in order to suck up and create a better relationship with him.

I think that a second term is becoming a safe bet. At this point Pence winning in 2024 is a possibility...

Why don't we give him more than two days before deciding that...
 
Each iPhone costs Apple around $200. Around $20 of that is labor. Even if the labor went up 500%, that still means the phone would cost them around $300. They could maintain the price and still be taking most of the profit in the phone industry.

How does Apple get away with charging $650 for a phone that costs them $200? Because the market will pay it. It's Apple's job to charge the maximum about they can for their phone regardless of what it costs to make. When manufacturing costs rise, Apple cannot raise the sale price of the phone...if they could, they'd already be charging the higher price with the low manufacturing cost. There is zero relationship between cost to make something and its selling price. But if the margin isn't high enough they can't sell the product anymore at all.

Sir your $200 calculation is wrong you should consider R&D costs, design costs, software development costs, Campus or infrastructure costs, suppliers profits from manufacturing. R&D, design and software development will be very costly you are receiving iOS updates free of cost for 4 years and you are playing for it upfront which is included in the cost of Apple. Do you know how many prototypes will be tested before arriving to a final product every year? Who is going to pay for them? Do you know each software piece that you use on your iPhone will cost millions to develop and Apple is not charging even a penny for updates. Every year if employees gets 10% performance hikes across the company the same should be passed on to the customer but price of Apple iPhone is starting at $650 from past 10 years.

My calculation of $2000 is based on the assumption that each every component used in iPhone is manufactured in US.
 
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How exactly are you sure this has zero to do with Trump? I don't recall any rumors of US based iPhone component production prior to this election cycle. The article even infers it is related to Trump with the bit on US protectionism.

It's as if people are actually afraid Trump may do a few good things for the US.

These agreements may take around a year or so to get to this stage. This time last year where it probably started Trump was still seen as joke candidate
 
Sir your $200 calculation is wrong you should consider R&D costs, design costs, software development costs, Campus or infrastructure costs, suppliers profits from manufacturing. R&D, design and software development will be very costly you are receiving iOS updates free of cost for 4 years and you are playing for it upfront which is included in the cost of Apple. Do you know how many prototypes will be tested before arriving to a final product every year? Who is going to pay for them?

If you want to call me wrong on that total, please provide a citation for where you are getting your price information.

Aside from that. Apple's entire R&D budget for the whole company in 2016 was approximately $10 billion. In 2016, Apple sold about 200 million iPhones. If you attribute every single penny of that R&D budget to the iPhone, it would cost them under $50 per iPhone sold. That does not meaningfully change my math, and it's also safe to say the whole $10 billion did not go into iPhone R&D.

And why in the world did you list suppliers' profits from manufacturing in there? It's including in the price of parts Apple bought from those suppliers.
 
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